Civil War at 150: Stagville was home to 900 slaves who worked on thousands of acres

AP PhotoIn this 1864 photo made available by the Library of Congress, Gen. William T. Sherman's Union troops use a lever especially designed by his engineers to tear apart train rails as they march through Georgia during the American Civil War. The rails were half the weight of modern-day rails and were pried up easily. To make Confederate pursuit impossible, they were destroyed beyond repair using a technique called "Sherman's neck ties." A large shell hole is in the building at left.

We move southward into North Carolina, where many sea and land battle sites attest to the Civil War’s harsh legacy.

Another kind of memorial is found off Exit 177 from Interstate 85: Stagville, a restored plantation, where 900 slaves once worked on thousands of acres. Some of that land today holds corporate parks housing high-tech Research Triangle industries. Merck, the pharmaceutical company, has a state-of-the-art vaccine manufacturing plant whose entrance is visible from Stagville’s. The plantation of 150 years ago serves as a conference center today.

“When we met, our very first meeting, we met at Stagville,” said professor Freddie Parker, referring to the state’s Civil War sesquicentennial commission, of which he is a member. He was speaking in his office in the history department at North Carolina Central University, a historically black school in Durham, a few interstate exits from the plantation.

Besides his Ph.D., Parker brought to the commission his personal history. He spoke of a great-grandfather born into slavery in 1851. “So when the Civil War came to an end in 1865, he was 14 years of age. ... I just wish I could have been around to hear some of the stories about how he survived.”

Parker told of how the sesquicentennial commission determined to offer “a balanced commemoration,” recognizing all viewpoints. When young staff members created a website, groups of Confederate descendants objected that their side was underrepresented, which led to more discussion, some of it heated, among commission members.

“I remember ... an older individual, every time something came up about the South, the North, he put it out there: ‘The War of Aggression.’ And everybody knew his position.”

But as the meetings continued, and members listened to each other’s side of things, the man began to join with those pushing, for instance, for an official state memorial to black struggles, too. “He was one of the primary ones ... And tears in his eyes. He made a complete flip.”

And how does Parker process this?

“That people are continuing to evolve. People are not static, stagnant beings,” he said, including blacks, whose view of Confederate fighters’ motives can sometimes be too narrow. “It’s a serious change; they’re not playing.”

Still, it will take the nation time, he said, “before we get to the point where we are less emotional, where we’re less polarized” about the war.